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For over 150 years, Milwaukee has been home to a large community of people of Polish descent. The Milwaukee Polonia Project hopes to show the interweaving, intertwining family trees that resulted in this community. It is hoped that, eventually, all the families can be connected to one another. The Milwaukee Polonia Project is also a means to explore our common history and celebrate our shared heritage.

THE ACTUAL DATABASE OF THE TREE IS NOW LOCATED AT THE MILWAUKEE POLONIA PROJECT TREE at Tribal Pages. (We still have much work to do, so don't assume that families are shown completely.) YOU DO NOT NEED A PASSWORD TO ACCESS INFORMATION ON DECEASED INDIVIDUALS.

Tuesday, September 25, 2012

The following picture appeared in the Milwaukee Journal on April 25, 1937:

This family is connected to the Milwaukee Polonia Project Tree through the daughter Eva (Tarkowski) Sikora. Eva's husband, Anton, had a sister Frances, who was married to Anton Pluta. Anton Pluta's sister Agnes was married to Joseph Domachowski (Featured Profile #5)

A little follow-up to this story. From birth records available on www.familysearch.org, I was able to determine that the mother in this family was Anna Szerbat (or some variation of that spelling.) I then found the following on the Poznan Project:

Other than the spelling of the wife's last name, everything else, including the date of the marriage, matches the couple in the picture.

The one thing I haven't been able to match up are the number of children. From the records that I have found, it appears that the couple had at least ten children unless some of them go by different names. For example, the birth record I found for Anna Tarkowski may match the wedding record I found for a Joanna Tarkowski. However, the 1910 census records state that Anna had had 18 children, but only seven were still surviving. So, it could be that the seven children mentioned in the picture caption were only the ones who survived into adulthood.

To end this story, Anna passed away just later that year. Frank lived until July, 1940. They are both buried in Holy Trinity Cemetery along with other family members.

Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Perhaps the most unlikely of all NASCAR
Winston Cup Champions. He was a Polish-American kid from Milwaukee
in a sport dominated by Southern drivers. He may also have been the
first NASCAR Champion to hold a college degree and probably the first to
carry a brief case to work. It is indicative of his career that when
he won his first NASCAR Winston Cup race (1987 Phoenix International
Raceway) he turned his car around and went the wrong way around the
track. (This put the driver's side of the car facing the outside of
the track and allowed him to wave to the fans.) He promptly dubbed
this move the "Polish Victory Lap."

Alan was born in Greenfield in 1954, the oldest son of Gerry Kulwicki and Margaret Matula. His early childhood was colored by the death of loved ones. His mother died when Alan was only seven, and his paternal grandmother, Anna (Stasiewski) Kulwicki, less than two years later. After his mother died, the family went to live with Alan's maternal grandmother, Helen (Karpinski) [Jusiel] [Mautal] McDonnell. However, she died just three year's later in 1967. Moreover, this death was just four month's after the death of Alan's only sibling, Kenneth Kulwicki, of hemophilia-related illness.

Alan persevered through these challenges. He graduated from Pius XI High School and earned a mechanical engineering degree from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Along the way, he had developed a keen interest in racing. It ran in the family: his father had been a crew chief for auto racers. Alan had started racing in short tracks in Wisconsin. Finding success there, he moved up to the bigger stage of national short track racing, where in a short time he also achieved success. By 1985, he had decided to make his leap to NASCAR, and to do it his own way, with his own team. Along the way, he put his UWM engineering degree to work in order to design faster cars. When he moved to NASCAR, he hit the ground running and by the end of the 1986 season, he had been named NASCAR Rookie of the year. The next several years brought continued improvement, and by 1992 he was the Winston Cup Driver's and Owner's Champion.

Sadly,
his reign as Champion lasted only five months. He was killed in a
plane crash outside Blountvllle, Kentucky on April 1, 1993 while
returning from a promotional visit.

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Please Correct Our Errors!

The connections shown on the Milwaukee Polonia Project are the work of many genealogical researchers across a large block of time. Inconsistencies are bound to occur. Moreover, all genealogy involves some guess work and assumptions. Therefore, even when using the strictest research methods, mistakes will happen. We apologize for this, but we also wish to make the tree as accurate as possible. Therefore, if you spot an error in our tree, please notify us so that we may correct it.